Failure and Change

It's been recently brought to my attention that I am a total failure as a blogger. And I was neither shocked nor offended by this opinion. But let me explain the reason for my failure. The problem is that I am a total stuffer. As in, I stuff my thoughts and feelings so as to avoid drama and tough conversations. My entire upbringing was largely defined by drama and tough conversations, so my instinct is to avoid those shenanigans at all costs. So when it comes to blogging I always just figure that nothing's going on and I have nothing to say.

Well at this point nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, it's maybe 50% truth. EVERYTHING'S going on, and I have nothing to say. Welcome to my life.

Joe always says that the only two descriptive words I have in my vocabulary are "nice" and "good".

"What do you think about these?"

"Nice."

"How was your day?"

"Good."

"How do you feel about American politics with relevance to Christianity?"

"Good."

"What do you think is the solution to all the injustice going on the world today?"

"We should be nice."

You get the picture. So now I will attempt to explain the last 3 months of my life and use slightly more descriptive words to convey my feelings about it.

First, Joe quit his job. He was really good at what he did but it just wasn't his dream. I know this is probably true of most people with the job that they're in, and heck, it's a JOB. The purpose of having a job is to make money to be able to live and support a family. But it doesn't always have to end there. He's got so much talent and I'm continuously impressed by the way his mind works when it comes to business and entrepreneurship. So he talked about quitting for a long time and had made up his mind that he was going to do it but was feeling tentative about when and how. This went on for a few months and finally I just got a little fed up. I thought if he was going to leave me at home with two toddlers every damn day, then he better at least be doing good work! So I told him one morning "I feel like you leave for work every day but you're not actually working or accomplishing anything." And that day he quit. I assumed it was a largely selfish standpoint for me. As a family, we need him to make our income, so of course he should have a job. But I thought he better have a great reason for leaving us every day, not just a hum drum redundant thing.

So now people ask me what his new job is and I have to answer that I don't actually know. God's blessed us so much in that Joe is able to work along side his dad, which is something he's always wanted to do. But he's able to do his "own thing" (which I believe might actually be his job title). He's consulting for a lot of different companies (which I think means that they pay him to give them good advice??) and I know he sometimes sits in an office and then other times he goes to meetings. And I know I get pissed if he's home later than 5pm. I already said I was selfish.

Ok, so that happened. Big change.

Also, we're moving.

One day my sweet crazy husband came home and said "I have some people coming to look at the house at 6:00" (this was at about 4:30). And I said "what do you mean 'look at the house'?" And he said "like to buy it." Right after completely freaking out, I made dinner, cleaned the house, freaked out some more, got really crabby, and then pretended to be a gracious hostess while some people came to look through our house. Long story short, they bought the house and we had to hurry up and find a new one. There are, of course, many reasons why this whole thing actually made a lot of sense and why our marriage didn't crumble over it, but I will spare my lovely readers the details and just ask you to trust me. So it came down to the wire, but we found a new house in time and now we're just waiting to close on both houses. We'll be Penfield residents in about a month! I'm pumped.

Also, we have a baby on the way.

It is not the fruit of my womb, we've talked about this, we're still in the middle of our adoption. Sort of stuck stagnant lately and I don't want to talk about it. But we have a baby on the way and we don't know who and we don't know when and we don't know from where. But we know our God is TRUSTWORTHY and good and this was HIS idea so that is where we rest.

Also, my babies are turning two years old in a few weeks. Oh good grief, how did that happen?? I feel like their first year was definitely the longest year of my life but I don't even know where the last 12 months have gone. It feels so fast and I just want them to stay small forever but alas, they are growing rapidly and talking CONSTANTLY and continuing to capture my heart day by day. They are my sweetest blessing and I am working my dream job by raising them.

So we are in a season of change and unknowing. And honestly, it's good for my soul. I know most people say they hate change but I love it. In addition to the drama and tough conversations which plagued my childhood...that time of life was also characterized by a lot of unpredictability. So I reside very comfortably in an often-changing environment. I actually tend to feel like something is wrong if I've been in the same routine for too long. So I'm enjoying all this for the most part, it's kind of a rush.

And I promise to try to be less of a blogging failure in the future.

Is it possible to be still on a roller coaster?

Ok, I'm going to level with you here. This whole adoption process thing totally blows. I'm exhausted. Right now Joe and I are smack in the middle of our second roller coaster ride of adoption and to be honest, I really thought I was going to handle it better than I actually am.

Our first crazy ride happened back in November and involved the possibility of adopting boy/girl twins who were due at the beginning of January...which would have meant we would have been trying to survive having 4...count them, FOUR...children under the age of 18 months. Which, honestly, we were totally up for. We figured that we just wouldn't leave our house for approximately 3 years but after that we'd be golden. We were actually really pumped about the possibility of it happening. Needless to say it did not work out but it was totally consuming for about the span of a week. It's hard to invest 100% of your wisdom and wishing into something that may possibly turn out to be nothing.

Now we're in the third week of our second crazy ride and we don't really have a lot of answers at the moment. There are a lot of details that I wish I could share but ultimately this story is not yet ours to tell. It belongs to a sweet 18 year old girl in New Jersey who is currently busy being an absolutely super hero and choosing love and life for her baby. It sucks being where we are right now with no knowledge of the direction our lives might take with our next child but I cannot even begin to fathom what it must be like to feel a tiny person kicking inside of you and know that you will never get the chance to hear that baby call you "mama".

There have been times in the past few weeks when I've just looked up at God and told him that I want OFF this ridiculous ride! It's too hard and it's too much and I just want to be in charge of caring for my next baby in my belly and having a due date and being able to paint a nursery exactly one month before it comes and knowing that it will look just like Joe and I. But that's not the path God called us to. He never promised easy. He never promised convenient. He has promised hardship and glory...HIS glory, not mine. "He who calls you is faithful, and he will bring it to pass" (1 Thess. 5:24). I have GOT to keep reminding myself that we've been called to this purpose and now it's just up to Him. But in the meantime, I'm a total basket case.

So if you think of it, could the three of you who are out there reading this please pray for Joe and I as we tread these unknown waters? I understand that we signed up for this, but now we're finding out just WHAT exactly we signed up for and it's pretty rough. And now if you'll excuse me, I will go be still and know that He is God....and then 5 minutes later I'll calm myself down and resolve to do the same thing...and then 5 minutes after that...

Pandora's Box

Yesterday I took an unintentional trip down memory lane. Actually I think it was a trip down something less lovely than a lane...maybe a trip down a dirt road with ruts and rocks and I rolled my ankle a few times as I went along.

I was down in our basement looking around for some things when I stood there looking at one corner of the room piled high with packed boxes. A few years ago my dad found himself in a place where he had lost his job and could no longer afford the mortgage on his house. He didn't know where he'd be going but he knew that he'd soon have to leave the house because the bank was going to take it. Our plan was for him to pack a few things that he absolutely couldn't do without, and then to hold an estate sale, selling off all the rest of the things in the house which would hopefully provide him with enough cash for a few months rent on an apartment yet to be determined. That estate sale was absolutely miserable. Our add in the paper just gave dates and times and said "Everything must go. Make me an offer." (we didn't have time to price tag everything.) We got to his house the first morning and there was a line of people standing at the front door and almost all the way down the driveway. I was terrified and pretty much in a constant state of anxiousness. When we opened the doors, there were people everywhere and we were so overwhelmed and I just wanted to hide in a corner and cry. I felt like we shouldn't be there and this shouldn't be happening. I remember one old, creepy guy holding up a green, one-foot corner shelf thing and asking me how much I wanted for it. I said "I don't know, ten bucks?". And he laughed and then yelled at me like I was nuts, like how in my right mind could I possibly expect him to pay ten dollars for such a piece of junk. That was seriously one of the top five most embarrassing moments of my life (and I do a LOT of embarrassing things) because I just broke down and cried right in the guy's face. It was pathetic.

Ok, so the point is that before the sale from hell, my dad packed SO. MUCH. STUFF. He's a total pack-rat and just didn't want to let go of anything. He packed an entire box of travel coffee mugs and those reusable Big Gulps cups that come with ribbed straws. And an entire box of baseball caps...many of which had 3-foot brims with profanity printed all over them. Never know when you'll need 25 of those babies. At the time, Joe and I had newly moved into our house and we had a whole basement with nothing in it, so we offered to let my dad use our space to store his boxes and some furniture until he found an apartment.

Well yesterday, here I was four years later, looking at all of those boxes full of the things he couldn't live without. They were still completely taped up and I had no idea what was in them because I honestly just never had the energy to open them and look through things that made me relive too many memories, which were just that...memories of a life I once lived and a parent I once had, and which now seemed a million miles and a thousand years away with no binds at all to my current existence. But I tend to be an under-analyzer and sometimes I choose to just do things without thinking too much about them or else I may never do them at all so I started in on opening the boxes. There were lots of Christmas decorations that made me smile and I could picture the exact place in our house where my mom would place them every year. There were a few sets of ugly dishes and some pillows and some blankets. Then there were of course, the big gulps mugs and the baseball caps. A whole box of shoes (most of which were purchased prior to the Ice Storm), and then one box that turned my memory lane into a confusing and difficult to navigate dirt road.

My dad was a city Fire Fighter. And man, when you're a kid, that is just the freekin COOLEST thing anybody's parent can do. And mine did it as his ACTUAL JOB. Playing that card always got me instant respect and street cred as a kid. Sometimes he used to drive a fire truck to our neighborhood and park in right in the middle of the cul-de-sac we lived on so that us and all our friends could play on it (which is totally illegal by the way and I apologize to all city of Rochester residents for this gross misuse of your tax dollars but again, I was 8 and it was awesome). We'd climb the ladder and put on the helmets and honk the horn. In school, my classes often took field trips to my dad's firehouse and by the time I was five I could not only slide down a fire pole fearlessly, but I could climb all the way up one as well and I'd show off my skills. I felt like the absolute center of the universe during those times. I mean, I absolutely beamed with pride. Nobody's dad was a cool or brave or exciting as mine. He might as well have been Superman himself. Up until around the time of the estate sale, I had been a fireman's daughter, it was a giant piece of my identity and I was SO proud of it.

So when I opened the box of all my dad's firefighting paraphernalia, completely covered in dust, it was like a shot to the chest. There were a few dye cast models of fire trucks, and a small porcelain statue of a guy sliding down a fire pole with his pants falling down (typical). There was a big, red, metal box that you would find on the wall of a school or business that has that lever you can pull to sound the fire alarm...that used to be on the wall in our house with a telephone inside of it. I pulled out a few other things and then at the bottom of the box I saw a black helmet with a badge on the front that read "LIEUT 1". Anybody in my extended family would know exactly what that is at first glance. It's my grandfather's fire helmet, which he wore in the city of Rochester in the 40's, 50's, and 60's. I pulled it out and blew some dust off of it and underneath it sad my dad's helmet, a little newer, a little more modern (they added face masks for the next generation) but a little more worn. I couldn't bring myself to pick that one up. But I couldn't believe that I found my grandfather's helmet and that it had been down there all taped up in a box for almost 5 years. I brought it upstairs and washed it off and put it on a shelf in our kids' playroom that holds a lot of family photos from a few generations.

I come from a long line of firefighters. And it's always been something I'm so proud of. But ever since my son was born (who my father has never met, by the way) I cringe every time I see a t-shirt that would fit him with a fire truck on it. It's like I don't want that to touch him because it's no longer something I can call mine. I don't know if that makes any sense. I can't bring myself to reconcile this amazing heritage I have with this current lack of pride I feel in my family situation.

So my son doesn't wear anything that glorifies the heroism of firefighters and my dad's helmet sits dusty in a box in my basement. Maybe it's because my hero let me down. Maybe it's because of the constant twinge of sadness I have in the back of my brain because my son has never met his grandfather. Or maybe it's because 5 years of prayers still haven't brought my dad to a place where he realizes what he's given up and what he's missing. I don't know but either way this is where I am.

And as I type this, I can hear my son giggling upstairs because my husband is pulling some silly antic just to make him laugh. And I can feel my Jesus holding my heart when it hurts. And these are the times when I know that heroes still exist.

The Problem We All Live With

Painting, "The Problem We All Live With" By Norman Rockwell

"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This is going to sound trite and possibly cheesy, but hear me: my heart breaks for the journey of African Americans in this nation. It truly does. The fight for civil rights over the past 60 years in our country and the deep, sick injustices that have happened here are enough to stop me in my tracks when I think about it. Robert Pierce, the founder of World Vision and Samaritan's Purse said, "Let my heart be broken for the things that break the heart of God." I know that God purposely created humans across the pigment spectrum and I LOVE that about Him. I love His creativity with His people. But I believe that God created ONE race, the human race, and that humans created racism. And THAT breaks His heart. It breaks mine too...I am NOT a crier, and I cry almost every time I think about actual incidents (like riots, and Little Rock, and lynching) let alone have to see them in pictures or videos.

I spent a lot of time yesterday reflecting on MLK and the places that we've been as a country. I see pictures of civil rights walks and sit-down strikes and it makes me sick to my stomach that actual human beings had to fight so hard just to gain the equality that was supposedly a very "self-evident truth" hundreds of years prior. Then I see the white people who stood with them and I hope with everything in me that if I were a grown citizen during that time that I would have been one of those people standing up for what's right no matter what my personal cost was.

Maybe it's hitting home a lot more with me this year because we're waiting to bring home our third child, who will most likely be African American. I have zero intention of making any statement of social justice through our adoption. We're doing this simply because we believe whole-heartedly that it's the Lord's will for our family and we are privileged to be in His will. But I do believe that it's POSSIBLE for us to do this because we're standing on the shoulders of those who fought so hard to abolish ignorance. I could not have more respect for those people, whose names I don't know but whose actions changed the course of a society and of history.

Do you wonder what the greatest injustice of our time is? A while back our book club read the book, Night by Elie Wiesel, which is his memoir as a Holocaust survivor. It was terrifying to me to think that this absolutely huge and disgusting movement could be possible in modern society. What is WRONG with us as humans?? It's unfathomable to think that some people consider themselves so superior to others that they have the right to enslave them, traffic them, tell them where they can or cannot live or go to school, or even to kill them. I think some of the things that future generations will look back on and say were our greatest injustices are child trafficking, abortion, and the lack of legal gay marriage (a VERY touchy subject as a Christian, I know, but I think it's true...call me if you want to get into that one).

I am genuinely afraid to be raising my children in today's society. I think so many things are coming to light and we have come so far in our understanding of the things we're afraid of. But there will always be new dangers and things that arise and new evils that nobody ever knew humans were capable of. I know that as Christians we are to uphold the truth of the gospel but I also know that if we have to err on the side of intolerance or on the side of love...I serve a God who chooses Love. I will teach my children to choose love. Can that be the legacy of our generation? I'd say it's worth dying to try.

"The time is always right, to do what is right." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Ps...if you have kids, buy and read them this book.

My To-Live List

I've been thinking so much lately about what I want to do with my life. Like, what I REALLY want to DO with it, what kind of legacy I want to leave, what I want to be able to say at the end of my road that I did with all my time. I think this has come about from a culmination of a few different influences all within the last month. Some are pretty valid and some are embarrassingly simple, but all significant in the complicated inner workings that are my brain. I shall list them for you (in no particular order):

-The new year.

I don't always get reflective and nostalgic and sappy around New Years time but this year I did. I've know too many people fighting for their lives and I have enough poor relationships with family members that I just wanted to reflect on all the important relationships in my life and to realize why they are important to me and how I treat those people.

-Having a new baby on the way.

I constantly think about what my children will say about me when they're explaining their baggage as adults. Like which of their faults will they (rightfully) blame on me or the way that I raised them or the things I failed to teach them? Is it crazy to hope that my kids will never have anything but good things to say about me? The answer...yes, that's crazy Sam. I know. But a girl can hope. So I'm reflecting on how I treat my kids and hoping so much to become a parent that strives for godly excellence...not just a parent that strives to do a little better than my parents did. I think that goal is lofty but worth every ounce of effort.

-Taylor Swift's new album.

Ok, go ahead and laugh at me. She's like 20 but she's wise beyond her years and I don't care what anybody says, I think she's quite a brilliant lyricist (and the songs are so catchy!...I mean, even Joe likes them). Her album is called "Speak Now", which comes from the line they say (or at least used to say) at weddings, "speak now or forever hold your peace". And every song on this CD is like a letter that she's written to someone to say the things she wished she had said in the moment. I feel like this is my life. I NEVER speak in the moment. I'm always afraid to say the wrong thing, afraid of rejection, afraid to apologize, afraid of confrontation. I live WAY too much of my life in fear. That's a fact and a sin. I'm always having conversations in my head with people to whom I wish I'd said a million things but the time has passed. My chance has passed. I didn't "speak now". There's a person in my life that meant a lot to me and I was too confused to treat them with respect, and I'll always regret that. There's a person in my life that I was a terrible friend to and I'm so sorry for that. There's a person in my life who saved me from making a terrible and life-changing mistake and I'm grateful for that. There's a person in my life who helped to save me from myself...well, I actually married that one, so I'm good there :) But I'd like to do more speaking and less regretting with the time I have left on this planet.

-Our latest book club book

Shout out to Dayla Terp for a great choice this month. The book is called "Year of Wonders" by Geraldine Brooks and it's about the plague that struck England in the 1600's. I found it fascinating. Anyway there's a scene in the book (before everyone starts dying crazy and gruesome deaths) where this woman and her children are peacefully playing and all is right in her world and she stops and realizes and says "This, this moment is my miracle." Except it wasn't really anything but a normal day, but she understands that moments of pure happiness, even in the mundane of life can really be a miracle if you let them. I know that sounds like a cheesy Christmas song or something but its true. I live a pretty mundane life. I love it madly but it can get redundant. I want to make it a goal to notice my miracle moments and store them up so that in those times when things get darker or more frustrating or sad or unknown, I'll have those moments and memories to fuel me. I'd also like to give a shout out to the joy of the Lord for fueling me.

-Too many episodes of The Buried Life

"Get busy living, or get busy dying" Duncan always says. Ok, I have no desire to spend every day of my life trying to skirt the law or to hide in a giant cake for 11 hours in order to sneak into the Playboy mansion, but I DO have a desire to get busy living. I think I'd like to do something more important than streaking at a major league baseball game, but I love the idea of having the DRIVE to wake up with the intention of doing something big. Even if that big thing is loving. Like this amazing girl, Katie who lives in Uganda and simply LOVES on everyone the Lord places in her path. That is waking up with a purpose. Loving is a big deal. I mean, so is streaking...but one is just up my alley and the other isn't.

-Reading "A Summer Day" by Mary Oliver

It's like she's just dissecting the things that happen in any normal day. I love it. And the last line of the poem is my favorite and really gets me. It says, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?". I think most of us have a hard time believing that our lives are either wild or precious, let alone both. I'm starting to think that mine is capable of being both and it's a good feeling.

I'm no slave to lists, but when I get overwhelmed (which happens VERY easily), I depend on lists to get me through my tasks. I think my idea for this year is to begin a "To-Live" list, instead of just always a "to-do" list. I would like to really focus on the way I want to live and the sort of mark I'd like to leave and the things I can do to bring God glory. Lofty indeed, but what else is really worth living for??

And since we've no place to go...

There's something about December that just begs me to stay home. I comply. Pretty much since the twins learned to crawl, I've been in the habit of leaving the house with them to do something, anything, every single day (well, weekday). Our schedule goes like this:

6:15- Joe and I get up and drag ourselves to the coffee pot and then do our own Bible time

7:30- B&E get up

8:00- We give the kids breakfast

8:30- Joe is usually gone for work by this time

8:30-9:30- B&E get downtime/tv time while I get the house cleaned and other odds and ends

9:30- TV goes off, I get them dressed and we head off to somewhere (errands, a play date, useless shopping, gymboree, take a walk, something like that) until about 11:30

12:00- Lunch

12:30-3:00- the twins nap, and I do every other thing that needs to be done during the day

3:30- B&E get a snack

3:45-5:00- we play outside, have some story time, do puzzles, practice "blanket time", or fill with other semi-organized activities

5:00- I make and feed the kids dinner

5:30ish- Joe gets home and plays with the kids while I make our dinner

6:00- B&E get another half hour of tv time while Joe and I eat dinner together

6:30- Family hang out time or kid bath time

7:00-Kids have nighttime bottles (I like to sneak in a little Wheel of Fortune whenever possible during this time...I figure it helps the kids learn their letters, right?...right??)

8:00- We put the kids to bed, clean up the house, hang out/play Yahtzee until bedtime, then we wake up and do it all over again the next day.

If you know me, you know I like my schedule. It works. It keeps most things predictable and keeps little busy bodies from getting into too much trouble. It keeps the days flowing by in an orderly sort of way so that each day doesn't feel like an eternity when I don't see or speak with one other adult. And this snow is REALLY throwing off my game! See that 9:30-11:30am block up there in my beautiful schedule?? I NEED to get outside of my four walls during that time. Last winter it was fine because the twins weren't moving yet and so I could sort of just move them from floor to chosen apparatus, to new apparatus, to lap, to floor, and so on throughout the day. But now that they want to run and play and bang on pots and pans, it feels pretty claustrophobic in here, even though there's only three of us. The snow is robbing me of my out-of-the-house time. I mean, I know I could bundle us all up and go somewhere we really don't need to go, but it's probably not worth it if it's going to take us an hour and a half to get where we're going and put all our lives in danger as well. So the last two days we've been holed up at home and I am just JONESING for a little trip to Target or the Sandbox. JONESING!

But alas, I have hurt my back and the weather is treacherous and the kids really are doing fine. So I'm on the couch with a heating pad, a cup of coffee, and Pride and Prejudice cued up in the DVD player. So for now, let it snow.

But ask me again on Friday how I'm doing.

PS...I'd like to add that we all lived through a killer Christmas tree attack this morning. Cassaras, 1. Tree 0.

a baby and a picture and a smooch and a blessing

Tonight while we were at our friends' house, during our usual Thursday night dinner gathering/chase all our kids around time, Brett found a picture sitting on an end table with me in it (well, I was in the picture, not the end table). And he picked it up and kissed my face in the picture, then put it down and said "mama, mama, mama" and smooched it again. It was unbearably cute and really made me feel like to him, I'm some kind of lovely hero. I want to really, actually be all the things he thinks I am. And that's why I wish every person could know the deep joy that comes with being a parent. It makes this:

totally worth it!